DWM 480 The Late Show

No, you can’t go to bed. You have to stay up and watch television.

Oh, what a topsy-turvy world we live in. The late timeslot has caused mayhem in our house. (I understand that a number of my friends now timeshift viewing to watch with their children. Slightly worried that this never actually occurred to me – or at least as no more than a passing Don’t Be So Silly. I fear that with this column I am leaving a permanent record of my bad parenting, and would like to take the opportunity to say to my children that Mummy loves you very very much and please don’t call in the lawyers.)

Strictly Come Dancing (husband gets v worked up about that title, a title which is as bizarre, when you actually come to look at the individual words in it, as Four to Doomsday – yes, he knows it takes the title of an old BBC television programme and melds it with that of a dance-related film but still – ???), what inconvenience you cause. The disruption to our ordered lives – the ones in which husband and I get to chill out for a little bit of a Saturday evening after the boys have gone to bed – is considerable. It’s not the boys who mind having to stay up late, it’s me. If sleep is for tortoises, as the Fourth Doctor claimed, then I am indubitably a Chelonian. Not that I have anything against Strictly Come Dancing, although I’m not an avid viewer. I could perhaps be placated by the creation of a Doctor Who version – Strictly Come Georgian State Dancing, maybe. The judges could be Roslyn De Winter, the Headington Quarry Men and Dancer from The Curse of the Black Spot. (NB I’ve mainly put this in because I like to give illustrator extraordinaire Ben Morris a challenge.)

We did OK those first few weeks when Tumble was on instead. (We actually planned to watch Tumble because of a) Non-Fan Twin being a budding gymnast and b) Peter Duncan from Blue Peter, but the resolution didn’t carry us that far.) Episode One of this season, as those who are as foolish as to read this column regularly may recall, was broadcast when we were on holiday. Episode Two likewise, with the additional bonus of being on husband and my wedding anniversary (although as it was our Steel Anniversary it should really have been a story about Cybermen, or at the very least featured David McCallum). Robot of Sherwood was our back-to-school episode, and thank goodness that was on at a reasonable time because back-to-school week is exhausting enough anyway, and ‘Dear Teacher, Sorry our children didn’t do their homework, they were too tired because we let them stay up late to watch telly instead’ is apparently unacceptable (sheesh). Life went on as normal for episodes four and five, before The Caretaker gave us our first dose of latenightitis. Kill the Moon appeared to me to be entirely made out of Lego, although apparently it wasn’t and I was hallucinating after a very wet, cold day at Legoland (birthday treat) combined with the late broadcast time made my tired brain continue to assume that everything in sight was made out of Lego unless explicitly stated otherwise (TARDIS? Lego. Moon? Lego. Moon spider germs? Lego. Moon dragon thing? Ha, fooled you, that one’s actually Meccano.) At the time of writing we’ve just seen Mummy on the Orient Express. ‘Is Doctor Who on yet?’ we were asked approximately 173,000 times between 6.30 and 8.35. Actually I asked it a few times myself as I yawned and tried to keep my eyes open. We’ve just passed The Mark of the Rani in our watchthrough, and I’m thinking jealously of those miners who had the chemical that promotes sleep removed; I’m pretty sure I have an excess of that.

The boys were very excited about there being a famous pop star in Mummy on the Orient Express – Three Lions is Fan Twin’s favourite song. Actually, we rather liked Foxes’s turn too, even though I didn’t know who she was prior to this. Look, I knew who Kylie Minogue was (star of ‘the episode with the song in it that for some reason they don’t get Kylie to sing’), OK? I knew who Leee John was. I even knew who the bloke out of Flying Pickets who was in Delta and the Bannermen was, even though I appear to have temporarily forgotten his name which undermines my point slightly. Sadly I have obviously now tipped over the age/pop-knowledge threshold, and anyway everything in the charts is just noise these days and aren’t police officers getting younger? And Perkins should have become a companion, by the way. My favourite things so far this season have been (in no particular order) 1. Clara’s outfit in Robot of Sherwood, 2) Clara’s outfit in Mummy on the Orient Express, 3) Courtney, 4) Perkins, oh and 5) the new Doctor. How about you? Now, I’d better set the alarm to wake me up in time for Flatline next week…